The Nun offers no scares: Movie review by Rashid Irani

This spin-off prequel to The Conjuring movies is just a collection of genre clichés.

A demon ‘terrorises’ a cloistered convent and a village, following the mysterious death of a nun.

THE NUN

Direction: Corin Hardy

Actors: Demian Bichir, Taissa Farmiga

Rating: 0.5 / 5

First there were The Conjurings, then the spinoff Anabelles, and now this spin-off prequel — that offers pretty much no scares at all.

A collection of genre clichés, The Nun follows an elderly exorcist (Demian Bicher) and a young novitiate (Taissa Farmiga) tasked with investigating the apparent suicide of a nun at a remote abbey in Romania. The duo is immediately faced with a spectral demon bent on terrorising the inhabitants of the cloistered convent and the nearby village.

Tepid jump-scare tactics, a murky visual aesthetic and a deafening soundtrack merely induce feelings of déjà vu. Faux-religious iconography abounds and the protagonists go through the familiar motions of throwing themselves into harm’s way repeatedly as they stumble towards the overwrought finale.